


Swan Songs

by AtypicalOwl



Series: OAMF [2]
Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen, I have not caused any additional deaths, the 'major character death' warning only refers to the canon events of the books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 01:29:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6174880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtypicalOwl/pseuds/AtypicalOwl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is full of endings. It's also full of beginnings. Betty Callahan has had a lot of both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swan Songs

For as long as she could remember, Betty Callahan had wanted to fly. Even as a child, she looked up at the birds soaring in that infinite blue sky above her, and thought, "If I just try hard enough, I can go there too."

Of course, no matter how hard a child wishes, she cannot fly on her own. Instead of taking to the air, Betty found herself crumpled on her bedroom floor, crying hot tears, with one leg twisted wrong underneath her. Her parents came rushing in and whisked her away to the hospital, and that is how she learned that there was more to flight than just jumping off of her bookcase and wishing very hard to float instead of fall.

Humans don’t fly. They go thud.

Children heal fast, though, and the moment she was out of her cast and walking again, her parents enrolled her in karate classes, mistakenly believing her bookcase escapade was the result of too much energy that needed to be burned off. For a while, she thrived, throwing herself into the punches and kicks, voice echoing to the rafters of the gym with every enthusiastic blow dealt to the practice pads.

When it came time to move to more advanced forms, though, she faltered. The instructors tried to guide her into the proper stances, and she could find them well enough, but as soon as they turned their backs, she would rise from the strong, grounded poses and onto her toes, ready to alight. They would push her back down, and gently take her by the shoulders and rock her from side to side to show her how much better her balance was if she kept herself firmly on the ground. She would smile, and nod, and brightly chirp "Yes Sensei," and then go back up on her toes for the next drills.

She hit as hard and as fast as the others in her class, if she put her mind to it. She could pull herself out of the basic holds, and once knocked her instructors' glasses off in the process. But then there were the times when she spun a roundhouse kick a little too far, and instead of overbalancing, just twirled for a while. This delighted her classmates and exasperated her instructors.

It was after one such lesson that her parents took her aside and told her that if she would not take it seriously, they weren't going to allow her to continue to take the lessons.

Which is how Betty found herself in the bleachers of the gym, sobbing and hiccuping into the sleeve of her thick cotton uniform as her parents went through the withdrawal paperwork with her instructors. "Stop that," her father hissed, "there's another class starting, you're going to distract them."

So she stifled her sobs in her elbow and wiped her eyes on her belt. It wasn't like she was going to need the stupid scrap of yellow fabric for anything, anymore.

A hand nudged at her arm; one of the older girls, a purple belt named Jackie, was offering her a tissue.

“Here,” she said. “This might be a little softer. And more absorbent.”

Betty sniffled and took it, wiping her face. The belt had only been smearing the tears around, and the tissue was indeed better.

“What’s going on?” Jackie asked, settling herself down on the bleachers next to Betty.

Betty, in all honesty, was a little intimidated. Jackie was a _purple belt,_ so much more experienced than her, and she was unstoppable in the sparring ring. (Betty was kind of glad that she wouldn’t have been allowed to spar until she reached green belt; the thought of having to face someone like Jackie was scary!) Jackie was the kind of person who came back from karate tournaments with first place trophies in everything, and helped their instructors with the demonstrations, and she knew _everything_ and could tell when you were slacking, and…

She always gently corrected Betty’s stance, and helped her get back up when she fell, and stepped in when another kid started hassling her…

Betty’s cheeks were wet with tears again. Yes, Jackie was terrifying, but she was going to miss her. “My parents won’t let me keep taking lessons,” she said. “They say I’m not serious enough.”

Jackie patted her on the shoulder. “I think you’re plenty serious,” she said. “But… Maybe just not about karate.”

“But I am!” Betty burst out. “I want to keep going! I want to learn more!”

“I believe you!” Jackie held up her hands to stop Betty from protesting more. “Maybe karate just isn’t the right fit for you. Do you know, I used to take dance lessons?”

Betty shook her head.

“Yeah, I started them when I was about your age, and I thought I loved them, but my parents yanked me out for the same reason. So I tried karate, and I really do love it.” Jackie looked at Betty, considering. “I think maybe you’re supposed to be the other way around; we’ve all seen the way you dance when you’re happy!”

Betty sniffed. “You really think so? You think I can be good at it?”

“Sure! You’re already really light on your feet, I think you could be great! You’ll never know if you don’t try!” Jackie looked over at where Betty’s parents were finishing up with the instructor. “Tell you what, say the word and I’ll go over there and I’ll recommend my old dance instructor. It’s up to you.”

For a good long while, Betty considered it. She thought about the spinning roundhouse kicks, and how she preferred the spinning to the kicking. She thought about jump kicks, and the times she thought she would rather not have to hit the punching bag and could just kick the air. She thought about her favorite katas, the structured, choreographed forms and her delight in practicing them.

She made her choice.

“The word,” she said softly.

“What was that?” Jackie asked.

“The word. You said ‘say the word,’ so I did! I want to learn how to dance!”

Jackie’s face broke out into a big grin. “Right on, kiddo. Right on.”

 

~~~~~

 

Betty stared at the headline in the Entertainment section of the paper, sitting so innocently there on her kitchen table. A single newspaper really shouldn’t have felt so much like a knife to the heart. It was just ink and paper, artfully arranged into a combination of symbols that held semantic meaning; there was nothing inherently destructive about it.

The article was all about her, a fact that, on any other occasion, would never have failed to delight her. She had an album, where she collected all the mentions of herself, carefully trimmed and pasted in neat rows.

Maybe it was vain, but she looked forward to being able to share the pieces of her past with others someday. Every stellar review, every lukewarm reception, every single-line mention, and even the few bad apples of the bunch, they all found an equal spot in her collection.

This one, though, was different. She was finding it hard to pick up the scissors and tape and add it in.

She stared at the headline, half-imagining it sprouting eyes and staring back. But that would just be silly.

“The Swan Song of Elizabeth Dunbar,” the words on the page proudly proclaimed.

It was not even a proper headline, really. It was halfway down the third page, nestled in between a movie premiere and a local celebrity’s alcohol-fueled misdemeanor.

All things considered, though, it really wasn’t that bad of an article. It just talked about the path of her career, the shows she had performed in, and her choice to retire from dance in order to start a family.

At least, that’s how it looked on the surface. Reading between the lines, there was an undercurrent of judgment throughout.

“The daring choice to prematurely step off the stage…” _How dare she be a quitter?_

“Choosing to retire with her husband to the suburbs, never to grace the stage again…” _How dare she choose family over dance?_

“…an unusually early retirement…” _How dare she deprive the public of herself until the day she became too middle-aged to be aesthetically pleasing, or injured herself too badly to continue?_

_How dare she put herself first?_

_How dare she go out not with a bang, or even a whimper, but a quiet sigh of contentment?_

Or perhaps she was reading too much into it.

She blinked, and the words on the page resolved themselves back into just that, words, without that accusatory undertone echoing around the back of her mind.

Words on a page. Ink and paper, yet they carried so much power in them.

Betty had power, too. The power to make her own choices, for her own sake rather than that of audiences, and critics be damned.

She picked up the paper and made the first cut.

Maybe they would call it a “swan song.” She was okay with that. It was just words on a page, ink and paper. Words had power, but she was the one holding the scissors.

The article went into her album, neatly pasted next to all of the rest. She closed the book on Elizabeth Dunbar, and placed it carefully to the side. Then she reached for another album that sat on the other end of the table. This one was empty.

She turned to the first page, and carefully placed a fuzzy ultrasound picture in the center, then smiled and pressed a hand to her belly.

The critics were lamenting that it was the end of an era, but for Betty Callahan, it was only a beginning.

 

~~~~~

 

Betty Callahan was no stranger to pain. From the earliest days of her dance classes, she had known that pain was going to be a part of her life. Some was physical: sore muscles, sprained ankles, bruises from overbalancing and falling. Some was mental: the anguish of losing a competition, not getting an audition, a favorite mentor retiring.

With all this pain, however, came mindfulness. She learned how to tell the difference between the hurt that meant something was wrong, the hurt that was just her body telling her, “Uh, please stop doing that, I’m not used to that,” and how long she could go before the latter became the former. She learned how to control it, and push through it, and embrace it as gracefully as she embraced her partners in the middle of a routine. There was no such thing as a life free of pain, and while it definitely wasn’t her favorite thing in the world, she could accept it. She could deal with it. She could coexist with it.

This ability served her well through her life. It saw her through the rise of her dance career; all of the sprained ankles, bruises, and cramps. It saw her through the births of both her daughters, the time she broke her arm trying to stop Dairine from falling off the counter, and all of the other infinite little hurts that life threw at her.

Yes, she truly could greet pain, if not as an old friend, then at least as the sort of acquaintance that you saw frequently at the coffee shop and nodded to as you both went about your business.

That being said, Betty never came closer to being incapacitated by pain than when she saw her daughters suffering. Sixteen hours of childbirth was nothing compared to what came just over a decade later: Nita coming home limping, with yet another black eye swelling her tear-stained cheeks, and clutching a library book like it was going to save her life.

She touched Nita’s cheek, trying to offer comfort without causing more pain, and fought a rush of emotion. Her daughter’s eyes were filled with resigned despair, as they had been so many times before, but there was a spark of something else this time, some inner fire that perhaps Nita herself did not know was there.

After their daughter went upstairs, presumably to ignore their advice and read in bed, Betty turned to Harry and said to him, “I'm going to make a plate for her, will you take it up to her?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Thank you honey.”

When he came back down, she asked, “So what are we going to do about this?”

“I don't know,” he replied.

“Our daughter is in pain! She looks like she’s been through a meat grinder!”

Harry sighed. “She doesn’t want me to intervene, I just asked her, and the self defense classes don’t seem to have stuck. I want to help, because it doesn't seem like she can handle this on her own. But I also don't want to overstep.” He looked at the ceiling, where Nita’s room would be. “I don’t want to hurt her in a different way by doing the wrong thing.”

“I understand that, but I don't want to see her in pain either.” Betty sat down across from him at the kitchen table. “It seems like it wasn’t this hard when we were kids.”

Harry shrugged. “It seems like it. Jacob down the road never picked on me again after I took a swing at him, but… I don’t know. Maybe we’re viewing it through lenses of nostalgia, maybe it really was different. I don't think it matters much because Nita is Nita, she's not Betty or Harry. And her Jacob is named Joanne.”

“We can't just sit aside and do nothing,” she said, a note of frustration creeping into her voice. “Maybe you handled it yourself, but she needs help.”

“If I knew what to do, don’t you think I would already have done it?” The words were exasperated, but Harry's voice was tired.

“I'm sorry for snapping at you,” Betty said. “I'm just frustrated. I don't like seeing my baby in pain.”

“I know,” he said. “Me neither. Maybe we could drive her from school? So they don’t keep cornering her?”

Betty shook her head. “Even if gas wasn’t through the roof, she wouldn’t go for it. She’s at that age, you know? We would just be embarrassing her, making the teasing worse.” She sighed. “If it gets worse, if it happens again, we need to talk to Joanne’s parents. Or their teachers. Or, I don’t know, someone at the school. I don't care if it makes Nita mad at us, if it means she stops coming home looking like she's gone five rounds with Rocky…”

Harry nodded. “It's a deal.”

They sat in silence for a moment before Betty blinked, remembering something. “Honey, don't forget to do the dusting tomorrow. The lamp in the living room is starting to look depressing.”

“Will do.”

 

~~~~~

 

Betty stood on the moon, and looked up at the stars, so bright and clear, unhindered by atmosphere or city lights, and her heart ached with the weight of having fulfilled her wildest dream. She looked down at the grey soil beneath her sneakers, and scuffed it with one toe.

Slowly, she raised herself onto her toes, then en pointe. It shouldn’t have been possible, not in the shoes she was wearing, but she was on the moon, and the gravity of the situation gave a big “up yours” to possible. She lowered herself back down, heels kicking up a small puff of moondust. It was going to itch in her socks later, she thought, but could she ever bring herself to wash it out?

Moon dust in her shoes. What a problem to have.

Did something like that even _count_ as a problem, in the grand scheme of things?

The shining Earth drew her gaze again, and then was blurred, as her eyes filled with tears. How would they fall, in sixteen percent gravity? Slowly, like a dewdrop from a rose petal, suspended forever in a single moment?

“Hon, are you okay?” Harry asked quietly, taking her hand.

She blinked, and squeezed his hand. Bless him, he had warm hands even when the only thing shielding them from the cold vacuum of space was a few words from a book and a shimmering soap bubble of energy.

“It’s real,” she whispered.

“Yeah, it is,” he said. “Our daughter is a wizard.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t talking about that, I was talking about,” she let go of his hand to gesture at the desolate landscape and the too-close horizon, “this. I always looked at pictures of space, and intellectually I knew it was real, but there was a part of me that could never accept it without seeing it firsthand. And now…” She laughed, the sound echoing dully in the energy bubble.

Somewhere off to the side and behind them, Nita and Kit were conversing quietly, playing the mature counterpoint to the adult’s childlike wonder. When had those tables turned? When had these children taken up the mantle of protecting the world?

“It’s real, and we’re on the moon, but at what cost? Our little girl grew up without us, and she’s gone and taken us to this scenic view,” she waved her hand again, this time at the suspended crescent of blue fire that was the Earth, “just to make us take her seriously, and then she’s going to go off to the bottom of the oceans, and _how are we supposed to protect her?”_

She trailed off, breathing hard. A single tear rolled down her cheek, and dripped onto the dust below. Absently, she wondered if it was going to mess up future NASA expeditions to the moon; would someday, a robot take a soil sample and discover the salty remnants of today? Or would it even matter? One drop would not ruin an entire moon landing.

Harry stepped closer to her, and took her into his arms. She closed her eyes, and buried her face in his chest. If she could not see the desolate landscape around her, and the planet hanging weightless above her, she could pretend for just a moment, that her life was still normal, and that her daughter would always be safe.

“I don't think we're supposed to,” Harry said into her hair. “Kids grow up, and go off into the world, and we worry about them, but we can't hover around them for the rest of their lives. I think that maybe ours has just grown up a little faster and a little differently than most.”

Betty scoffed. “Our daughter is talking about turning into a whale. I don't have a version of The Talk for that. These are not the sort of body changes I was expecting to have to deal with!”

She sighed, and pulled away, to tuck herself under his arm and look up at the earth again. For so long, she had dreamed of this view, and now she would give anything to wake up and have it all be a dream.

To get out of bed, and know that Nita was safe, and that the largest worry in her life would be how much sand she had to clean up when the kids and Ponch all came running back in after having a full day of shenanigans on the beach.

Oh, what she wouldn't give for a future with a version of The Talk that didn't involve whales. Or sharks for that matter. Or marine life of any sort.

 _Even in the normal Talk, there’s always crabs,_ her mind supplied unhelpfully. She snorted, and pushed the thought away.

“I guess all we can do is just what we've always done,” she said eventually. “Love our daughter, support her, help her as best we can…  and hope for the best as she grows up.”

“Hope she makes the right choices, and that she stays safe,” Harry agreed. “That would be true no matter if she's a wizard, or just an ordinary human.”

“Mom, Dad.” Nita said, coming up to them. “We're going to have to go back soon. I don't want to rush you, but we did only bring so much air.”

“Okay honey,” Betty said, “I think we're about done here anyway.”

“Can we ever come back?” Harry asked. “Or is this going to be a once in a lifetime trip? I am starting to regret leaving my phone on the table, I would kill for a picture of this as my lock screen.”

Kit laughed. “Yeah, we can bring you back sometime. Have a picnic or something. You can't put the pictures on the internet though, we would probably get in a lot of trouble.”

Harry snickered. “What do you think we would do? Tag ourselves on Facebook as being on the moon?”

They all laughed at that. For all the heaviness of the situation, and what the children would be facing under the sea, it was nice to have that shared moment of levity.

A few minutes later, the moon was empty once more, with no trace of their presence except for a single, frozen drop of water, nestled in the dust.

 

~~~~~

 

The children went to Mars, and they went further than Mars. They left with their neighbor’s macaw perching on them, and came back with empty shoulders and heavy hearts. They left with a copy of the new computer (bringing new meaning to the phrase “clone drive”) and came back with a sapient life form and stories of a whole planet that calls Dairine their mother.

When her daughters were safely asleep in their rooms, and Kit was sent home to be enthusiastically greeted by his dog (what was his name again? Patch? Poncho?), Betty Callahan stared at the innocent-looking laptop sitting on her kitchen table.

“I’m too young to be a grandmother,” she said, an edge of anxiety creeping into her voice. She sat down hard on one of the kitchen chairs. “Let alone to an entire species.”

Slowly, the laptop extended an eyestalk and stared back at her.

It looked almost like something out of a bad sci-fi movie. They stared at each other, silent, assessing, contemplating.

Betty blinked first, then shook her head, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

So much for pretending her daughters could have a normal life.

Here she was, in her kitchen, having a staring contest with the computer, and not the kind of staring that came from being befuddled by some technical glitch. At least if the darned thing crashed, the Blue Screen of Death didn’t actively _stare back._

It was just too much. She folded her arms on the table and put her head down on them.

She didn’t stir at the gentle whir of machinery, but jumped slightly when a thin metal limb patted her awkwardly on the head. “There there,” the laptop said, and Betty raised her head to look at it. Its voice was mechanical, but not toneless. “Are you alright?”

Betty blinked at the eyestalk. A small aperture “blinked” back.

“I may be hearing things,” she admitted, “because I’m pretty sure I just heard you talk.”

“You are not experiencing an auditory hallucination,” the computer said patiently.

“I thought I had to know the Speech or be a wizard to talk to computers,” Betty said, sitting upright again and rolling her shoulders.

“Not necessarily.” The eyestalk withdrew until it was just an inch or so long, then spindly legs extended and the computer stood up. “I am equipped with packages for both the Speech and most Terrestrial languages, with new ones available on request.” If it was a human, Betty imagined it would be sticking its chest out proudly over this accomplishment.

“ _How?”_ Betty asked.

“A combination of the Manual functions and,” the computer paused as its fan turned on, “and Google.”

Dear _God,_ was the poor thing embarrassed? Was it blushing on the inside and the fan had to come on to cool it off?

Or was she just reading its entirely nonhuman, inorganic “body” language wrong?

“I thought Nita said that you could understand any language with the Speech?” Betty asked, anxiety forgotten in favor of wonder and curiosity.

“That is true.” The computer wobbled a little on its legs, perhaps the approximation of a shrug? “However, it does not always grant an understanding of local jargon, cultural references and context, or widespread informal colloquialisms.” The eyestalk extended again, staring at Betty. “Perhaps you could assist in identifying a phrase for my internal dictionary?”

“Uh, I can try?”

“What is the significance of the phrase ‘I can has cheezburger?’ It is misspelled, grammatically incorrect, and yet shows one million, two hundred thirty nine thousand, four hundred and thirty three distinct results on Google.” The computer aperture-blinked on its eyestalk again, and peered closer at Betty.

She was probably making a big spectacle of herself, given how hard she was laughing, leaning on the table for support as she gasped for breath.

“Are you in respiratory distress?” the computer asked, mechanical voice gaining a worried undertone. “Should I contact Dairine and/or local medical authorities?”

Betty managed to wave a hand in a dismissive gesture and gasp out “No, I’m fine!” It took her another half a minute to get herself under control.

The computer waited patiently.

“Okay small stuff,” she finally said, wiping her eyes and a little hoarse from the laughter. “If I’m going to go down the rabbit hole that is memes with you, I think we need to be introduced properly. Hi, I’m Betty Callahan.” She felt a little strange doing it, but she held out her hand to the computer.

The computer sprouted another limb, this one with blunt pincers on the ends, and delicately gripped her palm. “I am Spot,” it said, shaking her hand.

Betty smiled.

“May we proceed with data acquisition now?” Spot asked, then scuttled backwards a few inches as Betty collapsed into laughter again. “I do not see how that could possibly have been funny.”

When she recovered, she gasped, “Yeah, it was, and first order of business is to introduce you to Star Trek: The Next Generation. Not only is it a gold mine of your ‘widespread informal colloquialisms,’ it’s got Data and Spot in it.”

Spot settled itself back onto the table, retracting its legs and letting out a disk fan sigh, in order to wait out Betty’s next giggling fit.

 

~~~~~

 

It didn't come as a great shock that Nita managed to get herself into wizardly trouble in Ireland. If she and Dairine were to be believed, they had recently traveled to the edge of the known Universe, so another country on the same planet could hardly be far enough to send her to protect her.

What was surprising was the revelation that Annie was a wizard too. She would never forget Harry's gobsmacked face when Tom told him that the wizardry came down his side of the family.

She also wouldn't forget the pang of quiet jealousy she felt. She understood that wizardry tended to be generational, but didn't quite understand why it had never been offered to her. She was strong enough to fight the darkness! She was responsible enough for the power! Where had wizardry been, when she was an idealistic child, wishing to fly by leaping from the bookcase?

Instead, she realized her dreams a generation too late, secondhand, when she had given up all of her imagination and wonder to the point that her daughter literally had to drag her stubborn behind to the moon in order to convince her that magic was real.

What would that five-year-old who dreamed of flight think if she could see Betty now?

She would probably think that Betty was being petty (and wouldn't she laugh about that rhyme, too). She has two beautiful, strong daughters who found this Power and are doing Good with it. More than that, they are sharing it with her, taking her to the Moon or letting her borrow the sentient clone of their new computer for assistance when the spreadsheets just won't behave. They talk to trees and to dogs, and translate for the nonwizardly folks in their lives, and generally try to make the world a better place.

Yes, five-year-old Betty would shake her head and stick out her tongue at present Betty.

Still, the mental image of a time-travelling version of herself blowing a raspberry wasn't enough to keep her from asking Nita, one day, if any of it really mattered in the end. "You're off saving planets and entire species, and I'm stuck at the kitchen table doing the taxes on your sister's sentient computer. I know children are supposed to surpass their parents, but honey... I just feel like I should be doing more to support you, or take on some of this burden so you don't have to."

Nita scoffed at that. "Mom, it's not a burden, it's my choice!" She shook her head. "Besides, you can't say that! It's not even apples and oranges, it's... Apples and blue Crossings food!" She waved a hand at Spot, who extended an eyestalk and wiggled it back. "Both are nutritious, delicious, and help sustain life, and just because they're different, that doesn't mean they're not both effective! The things you do, the taxes, taking care of the house, taking care of us, it's just as important, if not more!"

Betty raised an eyebrow. "Oh yes, how could I forget that making sure your father's W-2 doesn’t get lost is just as weighty as saving a planet? Or are the taxes the apple? I think I lost your metaphor somewhere along the way." She paused for a second. “Wait, blue food from _where_?”

Nita rolled her eyes. "Wizardry isn't just about saving planets in the big, flashy ways. Sometimes the biggest part of reducing entropy is the 'little' things," she said, adding air quotes to "little." "And besides, it would be kind of hard for me to go off and save planets if I didn't have a home to come back to here. A home that’s worth fighting to protect.”

She held out a hand, spoke a word, and her wizard’s manual popped out of thin air and landed in her palm. Nita flipped through a few pages. “For every big, flashy, planet-saving intervention, there’s thousands if not millions of little, everyday ones. Here we go.” She ran a finger down the page. “English please,” she said to the book, “and apply this filter.” She turned the book around so Betty could see it.

On the pages was a map of the Earth, covered in an uncountable number of tiny red dots. They were mostly clustered on the land masses, but a good number were in the oceans as well. The dots were constantly shifting, popping in and out. “What am I looking at here?”

“This is a live map of the active wizardly interventions happening right now,” Nita said, turning the book back around. “Now, given the population density, ratio of wizards to nonwizards, a few other averages…” She poked the pages a few times, then spun the book again. This time, the dots were joined by an immense number of green dots, that almost blocked out the borders on the map and dwarfed the number of their red counterparts. “This is just a really rough estimate because it’s not actively tracked like wizardry, but here’s the ballpark for how many nonwizards are doing things that reduce entropy enough to be considered an ‘intervention’.”

Betty stared. “What _are_ all of them doing?”

Nita shrugged. “Living. Paying their bills, changing the lightbulbs, giving a kind word to people who are down. Being good people, basically.” She shut the book with a snap. “Yeah, I can save a planet if I need to, but I don’t have the first idea of how to do taxes. But you can! And look at all those people that do! That is a lot more impressive to me.”

That made Betty smile. “Saving the world, one itemized deduction at a time, huh?”

“Exactly!” Nita’s watch beeped, and she jumped. “Oh darn, Mom, sorry to run but I’m supposed to meet Rhiow in ten!”

“Give her an ear scritch from me!” Betty called after Nita as she ran out the door.

“Okay mom!” There was a bang of imploding air, and Nita was gone.

Betty sighed, and turned back to the spreadsheets. The numbers swam in front of her face for a moment, and she closed her eyes and massaged her temples. "Spot honey," she said to the computer, "could we turn up the font size a bit? I think the numbers are giving me a headache again."

"Okay," Spot said, and the numbers adjusted accordingly.

"Thanks," she said. "Now, where were we?"

"Column G, Row 54," Spot said, highlighting the appropriate section. "You were concerned about the property tax values?"

She stared at the column for a moment, then stood up. "I need more Tylenol and coffee before I can handle this."

“Charger please?” Spot asked politely.

“Sure,” Betty replied, fumbling around under the table to find the plug. “I thought you didn’t need it anymore though? Some wireless power thing?”

“You enjoy coffee both as a stimulant and a comforting beverage, but it is not necessary to sustain your existence,” Spot said, mechanical tone a little petulant. She was getting better at reading him.

Betty laughed. “Point taken. Here you go, have your electrical espresso.” She plugged the charger into Spot, who whirred a quiet disk sigh of contentment.

“Thank you.”

 

~~~~

 

Months after the surgery, they went to the moon.

It was unspoken, but they knew it would be the last time.

Between them, Nita and Dairine brought hours’ worth of air. Harry packed a picnic, and Betty gently reminded him to bring a blanket to sit on.

“Moon dust in my shoes was one thing,” she said. “I don’t want it in my pants.”

He forgot the blanket anyway. Nita cast a spell instead. Neither of them blinked at the wizardry, any more.

When the sandwiches were gone (and Dairine explained why, exactly, she teared up over her bologna and mustard), the sodas were a distant memory, and the moon pies were mere crumbs on protective blanket wizardry, they sat, and leaned against each other, staring at the stars.

None of them spoke, for a good long while. The future hung heavily over their heads.

Finally, Betty couldn’t take it any more. “Nita,” she said, making the others jump. “You take care of yourself, okay? And Dairine, that goes double for you.”

“Mom,” Dairine started.

“No,” Betty said. “I have to say it. And you remind Kit too, and Ponch. You take care of yourselves, and of each other.”

Nita swallowed a sob. “Okay Mom.”

“Harry?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t forget to do the dusting.”

That startled a laugh out of him and the girls, and she smiled behind her own unshed tears.

Good. A life lived, such that its last days were filled with laughter. There was nothing more she could ask for from the Universe.

“And one more thing,” she said.

“Anything,” they chorused.

“Can we get a photo? Here? With the Earth in the background? We can say we Photoshopped it or something.”

Dairine nodded. “I’ll have Spot take it.” She muttered something, and the little computer popped out of nowhere, shiny casing reflecting and distorting the Earthshine.

“Looking sleek, Spot,” Betty said. “Love the upgrade. Wasn’t sure I was going to get to see it, I’m glad they pushed it out on time.”

Spot looked at her with an eyestalk, then scuttled over to her, kicking up a surprising amount of moondust in his wake. He leaned against her leg, almost like an affectionate cat. “With,” he said simply.

Betty laid a hand on his lid. “With,” she agreed.

Harry stared. So did Nita.

Dairine shook her head fondly. “He’s such a grandma’s boy.”

“‘Grandma?’” Harry mouthed silently.

“C’mon small stuff,” Dairine said, “take the picture first, then we can all cry, okay?”

“Okay!” Spot chirped. He leaned into Betty’s leg for a moment longer, then when she removed her hand, he scuttled to the edge of the force field and turned back around.

The Callahans arranged themselves, Harry and Betty in the back, Nita and Dairine in the front.

“Ready to photograph!” Spot said, extending an eyestalk to use as a camera. “Say, ‘coagulated dairy products!’”

“Cheese!” Nita and Dairine chorused.

Betty laughed, and Harry just stared at Spot’s eyestalk with a befuddled expression on his face.

(He had the picture framed.)

 

~~~~

 

She flew.

For a long time, she just flew.

At least, she thought it was a long time. Time itself didn’t seem to flow the same way she was used to, here.

There were a lot of things that worked differently here, at the heart of it all, not just time. For one, she could fly.

She spent a lot of time flying (for certain definitions of time, anyway). The sky was infinite and blue, delicate sculptures of clouds creating a landscape both alien and familiar at the same time.

She felt somewhat like she was missing something. As if once, a story had been told, but she wasn’t there to hear it, and everyone expected her to know the details of it anyway.

She thought that, if she had heard that story, she would understand why she ran into a six-legged otter, also flying in lazy, slow spirals, who stopped and stared at her as she approached.

It seemed wary, which struck her as odd, because here, there should be no reason for fear. She smiled and waved at it, and it swam tentatively towards her, leaving a wake of mist behind it.

When it came close enough to speak, it apologized, though she was not sure what for. They had no trouble understanding each other. In this place, there was no such thing as an inter-species language barrier.

She gave it a hug, because it seemed to be the right thing to do. Being hugged by a giant six-legged otter was very warm.

She asked what it was apologizing for, but it stumbled on its words and seemed very distraught. It had something to do with Nita, and the wizardly events that had taken place during her surgery.

She hugged the otter again, and told it she forgave it.

The otter’s tears sparkled in the endless light of the heart of time. She thought that, perhaps, they were not entirely sad tears.

They parted ways, and she flew.

She met a shark, and it was considerably less terrifying of an experience than she might have expected.

The shark was very kind, which was not something she had expected a shark to be. He was very big, and very scary, but very kind.

He introduced himself as Ed, and was very patient with her as she explained, through her giggling fit, that he shared the nickname with her husband.

For a marine predator the size of a whale, he had a very good sense of humor.

Ed told her one of those stories she had missed out on: about what had happened at the bottom of the ocean, and how he had chosen to be the guarantor to her daughter’s debt.

She hugged Ed. She was human-sized, and he was Ed-sized, but here, at the heart of time, physical size didn’t matter as much, and so she wrapped her arms all around him and held him close. He was still covered in sandpaper skin, and it was still rough and caught at her hair and clothes, but it was not painful. It was just a part of him.

They parted ways, Ed to do whatever sharks do in the afterlife, and Betty continued to fly.

She crossed paths with a pig. It was of the flying variety, with very cute, dainty little white wings. It also had a little spark of brilliant light riding around on one of its ears.

The Pig explained some of how Time could work, and the spark explained some of how physical existence could work, and she listened, and nodded, and understood hardly any of it. She had the rest of eternity to figure it out, though.

She gave them both hugs, because that just seemed to be the thing to do here. Trying to hug a sentient celestial phenomenon was difficult, but she eventually managed it.

They parted ways. Betty flew for a while, and decided perhaps it was time to land.

She found herself in a park, and went for a stroll.

Probably, she didn’t need to manifest a park, or the bright summer sun, or the sound of the birds chirping, but old habits die hard.

She sat on a bench and ran a hand over the wood; it was rough grain and well-worn. Were it back in her previous plane of existence, she would have worried that Nita and Dairine would get splinters from it, but here, this bench would not, could not, harm anyone.

In her peripheral vision, yet as sharp and distinct as if she was looking right at it, a squirrel ran past, then darted up a tree.

A big, furry shape bounded after it in a blur, barking the whole way.

Betty tilted her head to the side. The furry blur looked oddly familiar.

“Woof?” she asked, hesitantly.

The dog turned his attention to her, tail wagging. He bounded over to her, squirrel forgotten, and put his paws up on the bench to lick her face. “Hihihihihihihihi!”

“Oh Ponch,” she said, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his fur. He was warm, and soft, and slightly smelly, just like she remembered him. “Oh sweet pooch, what are you doing here so soon?”

Ponch wiggled a little bit. “That,” he said, a little bit of a whine in his voice, “is kind of complicated.”

She understood him perfectly, of course. In this place, there was no such thing as an inter-species language barrier.

“Oh honey, is Kit alright?”

Ponch sagged against her, and whined again. “Of course not,” he said. “Not for a long time, but he will be, someday.”

He pulled away from her, and shook out his fur, leaving a small cloud of loose hairs floating around him. He sneezed, and they all vanished.

“I check up on him, now and then,” he said. “Nita, too, and Dairine.”

“How are they?” Betty asked, slipping off the bench to sit beside Ponch on the grass.

“They are not okay either, but they’re living. They’re still doing Good in the world.”

Betty leaned into his side. “That’s all we can hope for, I suppose.” She scratched his ears, and he wagged his tail. “Can you show me the trick to checking up on them?”

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to.” Ponch sneezed again. “But, the old rules don’t really apply any more. And I can make an exception for an old friend.”

“Let’s go, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> Forever grateful to the amazing [fulldaysdrive](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fulldaysdrive) for being my beta reader and helping me polish off all the rough edges left by autocorrect!
> 
> goonlalagoon on Tumblr made some [amazing fanart for this fic!](http://goonlalagoon.tumblr.com/post/163300466505/waaay-back-when-i-first-read-what-the-butterflies)


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